Pain is all in the mind

(China Daily/Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-24 11:14

Pain is all in the mind

How come some people need pain killers even just to sit in a dentist's chair? And how is it possible for rugby players to stay in the game even with a broken arm?

Sydney University lecturer Lorimer Moseley has spent a lot of time studying these questions - and come up with some not-so-surprising answers.

In a recent research project, published in the latest edition of the journal Current Biology, Moseley and his collaborators found the size of an aching limb can affect the perception of pain.

Ten people with aching arms looked at their damaged limbs either through glass that magnified or minimized. If the limb was made to look large, the patient's perception of pain was amplified. When the swelling was artificially reduced, the real swelling reduced and the patient felt less pain.

The explanation seemed to be that the brain was responding to inputs and acting accordingly.

So, when you next bump your head, don't look in the mirror and marvel at the size of the swelling. A less painful response would be to imagine no swelling there at all.

Not a clear picture for diabetics

Diabetics are at greater risk of a cataracts and glaucoma as well as astigmatism than non-diabetics, results of a United States study published in the Neu-Isenberg-based German medical journal, Aerzte Zeitung, indicated recently.

Conducted by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia on more than 1,200 diabetics and about 1,200 non-diabetics, the study found that 11 percent of diabetics have limited visual abilities compared to just 6 percent of non-diabetics.

Around 50 percent of diabetics had incurable vision problems whereas a third of non-diabetics had similar non-treatable conditions.

Videogames good for elderly

Older adults might want to take an interest in their grandchildren's video games, if early research on the brain benefits of gaming is correct. In a study of 40 adults in their 60s and 70s, researchers found that those who learned to play a strategy-heavy video game improved their scores on a number of tests of cognitive function.

Sleep for seven hours

New research from a Singapore-US team provides more evidence that sleeping too little - or too much - may be bad for your heart. The investigators also note that diabetes and hypertension may contribute to this relationship. Among 58,044 men and women 45 years of age or older without heart disease at study entry, those who slept five hours or less or nine hours or more, were significantly more likely to die from cardiovascular disease over the next several years than people who logged seven hours a night, Dr Anoop Shankar of the West Virginia School of Medicine in Morgantown and colleagues found.

Sunny-side up

Breakfast may indeed be the most important meal of the day - as long as that meal is not a doughnut - a study suggests. Using data from a national health survey of American adults, researchers found that people who ate lower-calorie foods for breakfast tended to have a higher-quality diet overall.

Just say no to cannabis

Cannabis users between 17 and 30 years are very likely to develop multiple types of personality disorders than non-smokers in the same age group, a German study found.

Cannabis also affects women differently than men, the study published in the German psychiatric journal Fortschritte der Neurologie Psychiatrie found.

Researchers at the Protestant Bethanien Clinic in Greifswald discovered that young men tended to become anti-social or develop borderline personality disorders, while women who smoked cannabis often become depressed and insecure.

Of the 99 cannabis users examined, 90 percent later developed an anti-social personality disorder.

Symptoms included disregard for social norms, reduced or non-existent empathy for other people and an inability to change behavior despite negative experiences.

One third of the participants in the study had three or more personality disorders.

Agencies